Runner remembers relationship with Jesse Owens

Updated 12:01 am, Tuesday, February 16, 2016

LOGANSPORT, Ind. (AP) — Long before the movie about Jesse Owens premiering this week was made, he inspired a local Olympian who followed in his gold-medal footsteps.

Owens won four gold medals in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. The African American's feats contradicted Adolf Hitler's belief that white Germans were the dominant race right in the Nazi leader's own country.

Dr. Gregory Bell was a 5-year-old living outside of Terre Haute at the time. He's now a dentist at the Logansport State Hospital. As a teenager, Bell watched in awe at Owens' domination of the track. About a decade later, he received one-on-one guidance from the legend shortly before he won his own Olympic gold medal. After spending the years that followed joining Owens as ambassadors for their sport, Bell fondly remembers the runner and everything he represented.

Besides growing up on Midwest farms before becoming gold medalists and record breakers on the track, Owens and Bell shared other things in common as well. Both faced prejudice because of the color of their skin.

"I've had to sit on the back seat of the bus," the 85-year-old said. "I've been relegated to four seats in the back of a theater, those we could get into — some of them wouldn't even permit us to."

Owens challenged the widespread way of thinking that created these norms, Bell said.

"He was a great man at a time when you hardly dared to even use the word 'black' and 'great' in the same sentence," he said.

After becoming the first American to win four gold medals in a single Olympiad, Owens made his living appearing at tracks across the country. One of them was in Terre Haute in the early 1940s, when Bell was a young teenager.

"Fortunately that was one of the times I was able to arrange some transportation and my mom and dad let me go out to the stadium to see Jesse Owens," Bell said.

The experience affected him profoundly.

"It was magical," Bell said. "I'm thinking, my God, here is a man, a mere human, he looks like me and the people around me, but he isn't. At that time I said all he needed was a cape and here was Superman."

Bell went on to run track in high school and returned to the sport after being drafted into the army while stationed in Europe, excelling in pole vaulting, the long jump, sprinting and relays.

"I not only won the European Championship of the Armed Forces, I found out I was about a foot and a half better than I was in high school," Bell said of his long jump.

He was 26 when he competed in the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.

Owens attended the games and gave Bell and his teammates tips before they competed.

"Who better than to get some pointers from than the master?" Bell said.

Bell went on to launch himself more than 25 feet and won a gold medal in the long jump, an event Owens won the gold medal for 20 years earlier.

The two gold medalists ran into each other at events and celebrations honoring fellow athletes over the years that followed.

After Owens passed away in 1980, Bell wrote a poem in his honor called "The Inimitable." He sent it to Owens' widow, Ruth, who replied by writing, "The words just say everything."

Bell is looking forward to "Race," the film about Owens premiering locally Thursday, Feb. 18. He's particularly curious about how the movie will portray Hitler's reaction to Owens' triumphs. It was widely reported at the time that the leader snubbed the athlete.

"That is not true," Bell said. "He had done a lot wrong that he can be condemned for, but that wasn't one of them. I know that because Jesse told it to me. I don't know where you can get better authentication."